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Conaway vision takes shape
Davis Enterprise -
September
07,
2007
By Elisabeth Sherwin
Conaway vision takes shape
Davis Enterprise – 9/8/07
By Elisabeth Sherwin, staff writer
What a difference a year makes.
On Friday, the one-year anniversary of the county's eminent domain settlement, a Conaway Ranch spokesman described a conservation vision that would benefit both Yolo and Sacramento counties.
Tovey Giezentanner, spokesman for Conaway Preservation Group - the private owners of the 17,300-acre ranch - said the CPG has a plan for the ranch that involves two main concepts: a flood control project and a habitat corridor.
“No one has criticized our conservation vision,” Giezentanner said. “This is what we said we were going to do. We are trying to do what we said we wanted to do.”
Members of the county Board of Supervisors credit the CPG for working to maximize Conaway resources.
Helen Thomson of Davis, a former CPG critic, said she made her first trip out to the ranch last month.
“I thought it was a wonderful, beautiful place with lots of resources,” she said Friday. “We have to work together on resource management issues.”
Supervisor Duane Chamberlain, who steadfastly opposed the county's attempt to buy the ranch by eminent domain, said he always respected the Conaway Ranch's pro-conservation stance.
Commenting on the new era of good feelings between the county and the owners, Chamberlain said: “Everybody's buddy-buddy now, which is fine.”
A year ago, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a settlement of its legal effort to buy the undeveloped property between Davis and Woodland through the process of eminent domain. The court ruled that the county had the right to take the property but the price tag was very high -- at least $60 million.
Critics objected to the government trying to take the land from private owners and said the ranch was too expensive for a struggling county, which didn't have land management skills to begin with.
Supporters said the water rights, agriculture, habitat and undeveloped land were far too precious to be allowed to stay in private ownership, especially when the ownership group was made up of Sacramento developers.
Yet when the county ended its litigation with the CPG, it declared itself satisfied with a settlement agreement.
“We got protection of the water rights for the use of Yolo County residents; that was our primary fundamental county interest,” Supervisor Mike McGowan said at the time.
Giezentanner expressed satisfaction, too, for the owners.
“We're happy - now we can get busy and preserve the ranch,” Giezentanner said, speaking for CPG partners Carl Panattoni, Steve Gidaro and John Reynen.
And for the past year, that's what Giezentanner has been doing - trying to turn much of the ranch into a conservation easement.
“(New) housing was what we were so worried about,” Thomson said Friday. A small but vocal portion of the community refused to believe that developers would buy land they didn't intend to develop.
Giezentanner said the CPG would like to see 8,000 acres in an agricultural easement. The balance of the land, 9,000 acres, is on a flood plain - in the Yolo Bypass and the settling basin - and cannot be developed.
He said CPG's project - the Yolo Bypass Floodway and Habitat Corridor - has been discussed in meetings with state, local and federal elected officials, key department staff, and other interested parties including the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society.
The cost for both projects would be in the neighborhood of $215 million.
He said the floodway corridor would create temporary peak-period water storage capacity on ranch land from the Sacramento River.
“This is a significant flood control project,” he said. “But I don't know that I can quantify the magnitude of safety it would provide.”
He added that the impact this flood control measure might have on Woodland's potential flooding problems with Cache Creek is not known.
Giezentanner also said the proposed habitat corridor on the east side of the property would enhance fish migration through the Yolo Bypass, re-create historical floodplain spawning and juvenile-rearing habitat for native fish, and increase availability of nutrients that form the basis of the food chain within the Delta.
Given the critical need for and public benefits associated with this project, CPG would like the state to provide and coordinate funding from state, federal and local sources and to hold the conservation easement that would help pay for the project. He did not know how much might be paid for the easement or what size it would be.
“I had hoped to have a conservation easement on 8,000 acres of the property (all land outside the bypass and settling basin) by the end of the year,” Giezentanner said. “That's not going to happen · but with the political leadership I think the whole project could be in place by December of 2008.
“We've reached out to Yolo County, the cities of Woodland and Davis, and to UC Davis to discuss a potential easement boundary and to gain feedback re: where they would like the easement boundary to go?
“As you might imagine, given the size of the property and its location and the fact that the easement would be a permanent easement, we're asking the various jurisdictions to think strategically about where they may want joint regional infrastructure facilities in the future on or near Conaway, so that the easement instrument that is finally negotiated with the state includes sufficient flexibility or does not include area that will be needed for future infrastructure improvements” like expanding the Yolo landfill or the Davis and/or Woodland waste-water treatment facilities, for example.
http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2007/09/09/news/119new1.txt
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